My daughter's news!

This is my daughter Tara. Isn't she gorgeous?

Here she is with her boyfriend Mike at Thanksgiving.
And here they are at Christmas. Aren't they adorable together! Last night my daughter called me with some news. She wants me to come to see her Saturday....
...and shop for a wedding dress! Woohoo!

She said they were looking at rings and he told her she could start planning a wedding. He refuses to "officially" propose until he has the ring, but they are looking at having a December wedding.

I can't wait to see what she looks like in a wedding dress. I just hope we can find something to cover that "tit tat!"
She wants her colors to be silver and sky blue. These are the colors she has wanted since she was a little girl, and she wants to be married as close to Christmas as she can. I guess some of this has to do with both her and I having December birthdays.

I have found a dress online that I love. Only trouble is that it isn't carried in catalogs, and I will have a heck of a time finding it. It's a Spencer Alexis brand and they have the most beautiful clothes. I already have two other pieces of their clothing.
Saturday is going to be so much fun! Except for one thing. That might be the day my son leaves for Texas for six weeks, but then again, his departure has been delayed almost two weeks anyhow so who knows. At any rate, I am going to concentrate on the fun of seeing my daughter in a wedding dress!

Edited to add: She found the dress! It was only the second one she tried on and I have to agree, it's The Dress! I'll post more about our day and pictures of her choice sometime this week!

A Day on the Lake

Friends asked me to go out on a boat today! We went to the chain of lakes in northeast Indiana. It was so much fun! I hadn't been out on a boat in many many years!

Here we are just off the boat ramp in a quiet little channel.


Here is my 15 year old getting ready to enjoy the warmth and sun...still clothed. My older son decided to stay home and sleep in. I think he should have joined us. I'm ready for the sun though! Lots of sun block and my hair isn't messed up yet.

This is my best friend Monica. She and her husband are the ones who invited us. The boat belongs to her father-in-law.
Her hubby Jon didn't want his picture taken. So I complied...sort of.
Our first view of Otter Lake...

And we're off! We saw lots of nature along the way!

We also saw some fantastic houses on the lakes. I can't imagine how rich you have to be to afford them.

This house below was on a little island! I thought that was so cute. But I also wondered, do they have plumbing? Hot showers? Flush toilets?
The landscaping on the house below was just awesome!
This castle house was so cool!
My sons thought I posted some embarrassing pictures of them. So I am going to assauge them by posting a horrid pic of my hair blowing in the wind as the boat was going top speed.
I look like I'm having fun though! My son was cool and collected.

We went to a place on Lake James called the sandbar. This is a part of the lake on a sandbar that is only about 3 feet deep. Boats gather and anchor and people swim or spend the day. There is even a grill place there in the water where people can buy food! How cool is that!
Below is my dream boat!
It was so much fun boating and swimming! But like all good things, it must come to an end.
We packed up and headed on home. Hope you enjoyed our adventure!

She's in the parlor!

My boys came to visit me at work today!
I didn't have any clients scheduled so that I could do paperwork all day, so when they came by unexpectedly, the front receptionist sent them back to my office.

They came back a minute later saying that they couldn't find me there. She suggested I might be in the parlor.

They took off again in search of me. They returned again in a couple minutes, and my oldest said, "where's the parlor?" Yep! You know what they were thinking! An actual parlor!

The receptionist gently told them, "I meant she might be in the bathroom."

My oldest son scratched his head and the youngest started giggling. I would have thought that at least one of the two would have caught on, but they are boys...they miss subtleties and gentility.

When my oldest boy comes home from work tonight, I'm going to ask him if he found the parlor yet. Heh!

P.S. I found the beautiful parlor picture at www.martincoryellhouse.com. Oh, and I was actually in the file room!

Have a great evening!

Critters on Bonnie Lane

Here on the end of Bonnie Lane, you can find a number of different creatures!

Here are some birds in a tree. I love watching the birds. We have a nice variety from robins, sparrows and starlings, to cardinals, bluejays, wrens, and woodpeckers. There is even an eagle who nests further downstream! My son took the pic of the birds.

Last week we found a moth under our front porch light. How cool a find was this! Here he is near my red star.

Lately, we've been noticing a little woodchuck in the yard. Yes, I know they burrow and are destructive, but he is just the cutest little thing when he comes into my yard to eat. I think his burrow is on the riverbank. My son took these three pictures of the little guy.

Below is a little hedgehog I happened across under the bush next to my back patio. Oh wait, he's made of resin! He is so darn cute though that I wanted to include him.
We also had an indoor critter tonight. Yikes!!!!! I was sitting on the toilet when I saw this gargantuan wolf spider on my bathroom door. I swear, I first thought it was a miniature tarantula! It was the biggest wolf spider I had ever seen and every bit as big as this picture! Good thing I was already sitting on the toilet because I just about crapped myself.
He was near the door handle so I couldn't even open the door. I had to call for my son to open it slowly from the outside and I skedaddled out of there as quickly as I could! We found him on the outside of the door and sprayed him down with Raid, but he dropped to the floor and crawled off. I hope he met his untimely death of asphyxiation under my washer. The pic here was from Google images. I did not stop to take a picture of the nasty critter!

Ugh, after that horrid pic, I need something pretty to look at! Here is a peony in one of my flowerbeds.
And here is a picture of my driveway garden in early spring. I wish it still looked like this, but these were not flowers with long lives.
Let's hope the spider had a shorter life than these lovely flowers! There, now I feel a little bit better!

I may not be on much in the next couple of days. My youngest son is getting ready to go to Texas for 6 weeks with his father. This will be the first time that I have spent over a week away from my baby! More about that later. Have a great rest of the week!

New Award, and I've been tagged!

Yay, I got an award!

Deb at Deb's Country Kisses awarded me with the Arte Y Pico award! I am so excited! Thank you so much, Deb, this really means a lot to me! Deb is one of those people that I felt like I had known forever when I started reading her blog. Isn’t it odd you have can feel an instant kinship with someone you’ve never met? I’d like to pass this award along to some of my favorite blogs. Many of my faves already had this award, so I am giving it to those who don’t have it yet. Believe me, all of the blogs in my list of favorites deserve this, but I can pass it on to only five and let the rest of you bless others!

The rules that apply to this award is as follows:

1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserving of this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also contribute to the blogging community, no matter what language.
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and a link to his/her blog to be visited by everyone.
3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that presented her/him with the award.
4.The award winner and one who has given the prize have to show the link of "Arte y Pico" blog so everyone will know the origin of this award.
5. To show these rules.

I am awarding the following blogs in alphabetical order:

Donna at An Enchanted Cottage. I first saw Donna’s cottage rooms on Rate My Space and they instantly became some of my favorites. Then I found her on the blogs! Imagine my excitement at getting to see even more of her beautiful home and lovely creamy white painted furniture! She also has a lovely garden full of birdbaths and fountains. I love visiting her blog.

Robin at Bittersweet Punkin. This was one of the first blogs I visited and I was struck by the love she has for her family and her stories of their lives. She also creates some beautiful things and has her own online shop! We also share a love for the music of Dan Fogelberg. Stop on by her site for a listen.

Kat at Katerpillars No More has such a fun blog. Her personality just shines through, and she creates the most amazing dolls and other fun stuff. She has a wonderful testimony about her life and I admire her more than she can possibly know for her strength and the willingness to share about the things she has been through.

Nikki at The Scarlett Rose Garden has the funnest blog! She has some incredible vintage dresses and she actually uses them! I love her sense of fun, and she has the sweetest little boy. I am having so much fun watching her progress on her older house. She has a great sense of humor and I just love finding comments from her!

Glenda at Tootsie Time is new to blogging, but she has already taken the blogging world by storm! She raises her own flowers from seed in a lovely greenhouse her husband made for her, and has terrific gardening advice and is always willing to answer questions. She has hilarious stories about her three precious children that will have you howling in laughter.

I’ve been tagged by Robin at Bittersweet Punkin! If you haven't seen her blog yet, hop on over! She is one of the bloggers I am awarding above. So here are my five questions:

1.What was I doing 10 years ago? I was married and had 3 children at home; a 17 year old, a 9 year old and a 5 year old. I was working third shift at a factory making cathode ray guns for TV tubes and was serving as a shop steward in the union. The above pic is a cathode ray gun. The diagram makes perfect sense to me! I don’t remember much else as I never had enough sleep and life was a blur. Seriously! I also had purchased my first computer and was really enjoying being online! I was blissfully unaware that the next year and a half was going to bring about BIG changes.

2. Five things on my To-Do list: Finish clearing out boxes from the living room and shampoo the carpet (it has served as a storage room); paint all of the furniture that I have had sitting in the garage waiting to be painted; try my hand at sewing by making a pillow cover for the rattan chair I got for free that still needs to be painted; weed the flower gardens; finish up the Old House which needs a good cleaning so I can sell it (long story); do general cleaning around this house.
3. Snacks I enjoy: Dove chocolate, Godiva chocolate, cheesecake, fresh fruit, anything sweet! 4. Things I would do if I were a millionaire: Pay a maid to come clean my house! Pay off the house and buy a vacation cottage on a lake and a pontoon boat and speedboat; travel around the world, especially Europe; go back to school and get my bachelor’s degree then a master’s degree; send my kids to the college of their choice; do some good in this world!

5. Places I have lived: Three different towns in northwest Ohio and in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I wish I could live in Paris!

I'm tagging all the people who received my award! This was fun, and I think its a great way to learn a little bit about our friends.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful evening!

My weekend so far

My weekend started out a little shaky!



I was sitting at my computer visiting Rhondi's porch parties when I heard the siren go off! Oh my, this is the first I have heard something like that in a very long time, and the first time since I lived here! I looked out and the sky was very dark and gloomy. I would have taken a picture, but once I saw the sky, I became a big chicken! (Yeah, I know that's a penguin in a chicken hat but he was so cute!)
Uh oh, no basement here! I had pulled in the cushions from the deck so they wouldn't get rained on. I pulled one down into our little short hallway, put the dog in the crate in the utility room right across from us, and we hunkered down with more of the cushions to protect ourselves. I tried to be brave, but I was really scared.
Did I mention that when it comes to tornadoes, I'm really a scaredy cat? I have never witnessed one, but growing up, I was always the first to dash down to the basement. I took this serious though because of all the tornadoes sweeping the country. We had some fairly close by on May 31.
We were safe though. None touched down anywhere, but funnel clouds were spotted. The heavy gusts of wind of up to 70-80 miles per hour did create a lot of damage though. Lots of trees down and there are still people in the area without electricity.

This poor tree was completely uprooted and blocked the entire road! I love going down this street because of the pretty older homes and the tree tunnel. This was a healthy tree too. I looked at some of it when they were loading logs from it. It was probably 2 1/2 feet through, so it was big.
Here are two trees that came down at the college. Again, these were healthy trees! I am thankful that no trees landed on anyone and no one was hurt.

Saturday was beautiful. What's a girl to do who was so badly frightened the night before? Why go shopping of course! Look at what I found at a garage sale! I got all of this for just $16.75. Love the Warren Kimble pictures! I collect birdhouses too, and love the little red, green and blue basket. Those are the colors in my family room.
I also got an awesome bellows for just a buck there. I don't know if it's vintage, but it reminds me of the antique bellows my grandmother had at her cottage at the lake. Wish I had it now!
After the garage sale, I went to see my daughter. We went to a Goodwill store in her town, and I made some incredible finds! I was so happy. Just look at this beautiful quilt I found for $15! Yes, that is all it cost! And I think its a king size. It's from JC Penney's home collection. Did I need it? No! Did I have to have it? Yes!!! I think it would be wonderful in the spare bedroom that I will have if one of my kids moves out. Plus if I ever decide to do my living room or family room over, it would be great covering the couch.

Here it is after being washed. It didn't dry in the dryer, so I hung it out on the clothesline. I loved the way it looked swinging in the breeze, and it smelled glorious when I took it off the line!

I also found these pretty linens that I plan to lay over my end tables and coffee table in my living room someday.

I love the embroidered detail! I got all four for just $.50. That is for the whole lot of 4, not individually!

Here was my last big find...chair covers! I found three of these for just $4 a piece. I know I'll use them as I also have some chair covers in a pattern which will coordinate nicely. Here is the pattern up close. So very pretty and feminine!
It just blows me away that they sold all of the soft goods for these prices. There was not a mark or stain or tear anywhere on anything! I also bought a blouse for myself and some cute picture frames that I'll save to show another time. I bought my daughter a cute t-shirt and a Winnie the Pooh pillow. All in all, great finds! My daughter and I ended our jaunt by going to Dairy Queen for caramel Moo-lattes.

Even though I had some great buys, I am going to have to stop going shopping. I had a little extra money this month, but its time to start watching my pennies again, however, it is just too fun to decorate with garage sale and thrift store finds! It helps me make my house my home.

Hope everyone is having a fabulous weekend! I didn't post the last few days as I was still visiting all the porches from Rhondi's Porch Party. If you haven't visited there, you really should because there was such wonderful porches and decks!

Tomorrow I'll be posting an award I received and I'll be passing it on to five of my favorite blogs. I also got tagged and will be sharing my answers. Too fun!